How to deal with the narcissist’s flying monkeys

Narcissists create false realities. It’s how their disordered minds operate. They live in a world of projections. If you were in a relationship with a narcissist, you went from the perfect goddess on the pedestal (a narcissist’s projection) to the less than garbage crazy unstable person that can’t get over him (again a narcissist’s projection). Neither of the two was or is really you. The same if your parent is a narcissist, you have been assigned a role, this role is a projection of a disowned fragment of the narcissist’s mind and has nothing to do with you. The narcissist doesn’t see you as the human being that you are.

The problem is that the narcissist infects with this false reality of his or hers the entire social environment that the two of you share. Everyone the two of you know together is fed the narcissist’s version of you. They don’t even think to question that and simply relate to you as to the person the narcissist’s disordered mind has created.

This is extremely difficult and very painful. The flying monkeys don’t believe you when you tell them that the narcissist is actually disordered because they are fed the narcissist’s loving kind awesome false self. They outright dismiss you and invalidate you and essentially further psychologically abuse you. If you get angry or emotional, you only confirm the narcissist’s version of reality – you are of course unstable…

So how do you deal with the flying monkeys? What do you do when their hurtful behaviour is triggering you so that it all stops backfiring against you?

I explain more in the video below:

Follow Blog via Email

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Share this:

Like this:

Published by terezapultarova

London-based science and technology journalist, writer, video producer, health and psychology blogger, Czech voice-over artist, English - Czech translator and transcreator. I have a bachelor's degree in journalism from Charles University in Prague, the Czech Republic, master's in cultural anthropology also from Charles University and another master's in science from the International Space University in Strasbourg, France.
View all posts by terezapultarova

12 thoughts on “How to deal with the narcissist’s flying monkeys”

Absolutely on the money. At the heart of Narcissistic abuse is the enforcement of the Narcissists false reality and false self on everyone around them. Gaslighting supports it, FOG maintains it, the cycle of abuse perpetuates it, but the central issue is that the Narcissist must push their reality on others to survive. Those who resist are discarded. Those who fall for their manipulations are further manipulated. The Target is subject to the worst abuse of all because they are the one that the Narcissist needs the most. The tragedy is that once the Target is fully convinced of the false reality, they will be discarded because they have confirmed the Narcissists superiority by trying to love them. There is only one choice. Believe the false reality and be destroyed by it, or reject it and get as far away as possible. These individuals are irredeemably lost in their own fantasy in which everyone who comes close must be lesser than them so that they can feel safe. It really is that simple. The Narcissist must destroy others to feel safe in their fantasy world. They are programmed to do this, and it will never end.

Thank you for your comment Matt. I have just been thinking today that the disorder is much more serious than people like to think. They really do live in a world of their own projections. It’s scary. And the ruthless force with which they push their reality onto you. It’s crazy and yet so many people are totally oblivious to it. It’s fascinating and scary at the same time…

The disorder is far more serious than people give it credit for. At the malignant end anyway. It’s a spectrum disorder. Many individuals have traits of Narcissism but can be reasoned with. Malignant Narcissists on the other hand are a different matter.

Such individuals literally live in a fantasy of their own devising. They have learned that their looks and charm can lure others into their world and they are very choosy about who they target. Those who are easily impressed are included. Those who ask too many questions are discarded. This is how they secure Flying Monkeys. When it comes to the Target of abuse, they go for the bright, the beautiful, the intelligent but above all those who don’t believe they are those things.

All it takes is for the Target to have a scrap of shame and it’s all over. What the Narcissist has found is a beautiful person who doesn’t know their own worth. In kind hands, that person would be nurtured, but in the hands of a Narcissist, they will be destroyed. The Narcissist will push their reality on the Target by Gaslighting them so that whatever it is they feel shame about is placed at the heart of the relationship as the source of everything that is “wrong”. The Narcissist will pick at that until it consumes the Target, destroying their self esteem. And all of that is done so that the Narcissist does not have to look at how damaged they are.

In that way, the Narcissist can control the beautiful person they have secured, and that allows them to feel safe in their fantasy. They believe that the wonder they have drawn in will never leave because the Narcissist is superior to them in the way they have identified is “wrong” with them. Whenever the Narcissist feels bad, they can ramp up the Gaslighting and manipulation to make the Target feel bad, which makes the Narcissist feel safe again. What you end up with is an Alice in Wonderland scenario where the Narcissist must insist that their reality is the real one, and that the Target is flawed, because the idea that the Target is independent and wonderful and the Narcissist is flawed is unbearable to them. If the Narcissist admitted for one second that they are less than perfect, in their mind their whole existence would come crashing down, their beautiful Target would leave and they would be utterly alone in a hostile world. That can’t happen, and so the cycle of abuse is inevitable.

This is, of course, unsustainable. The longer the Narcissist exerts their control, the more they come to despise the Target for allowing them to do it. All the Target wants is for the relationship to be loving, but they don’t know they are in a fight for dominance based on the Narcissists fear of loss of control and inbuilt inferiority. Eventually, the Narcissist sees the Target as inferior because they are still around, and they know that the Target should have kicked them to the kerb by now. They reason that a strong, worthy person would fight back. What they don’t realise is that the reason the Target hasn’t kicked them to the kerb is because the Narcissist has been systematically managing them down and destroying their self esteem. They really don’t see that they have caused this, so they come to believe that the Target themselves believes that they are inferior to the Narcissist. At which point the Narcissist looks elsewhere for an “upgrade”.

The ruthlessness with which they force their false reality on the Target is what brings all this about. Their insistence on the truth of their false reality and false self causes them to pick away at the beautiful person they wanted to have in their lives to make them feel better about themselves, to make them feel worthy. They create a relationship in which the Target is never allowed to feel good, because the Narcissist fears that if they did, they would leave. The Narcissist must feel that they are superior to the Target in some important way to reassure themselves, and it is that very thing that will lead them to devalue the Target, eventually destroying them in the discard.

It is scary, and fascinating. These individuals are utterly alien to all that we understand to be loving. They are hopelessly lost in their own worlds, into which they draw the beautiful, the smart, the talented, the wonderful, the wounded. And then they destroy them because of their pathological programming that means that they can never be told that they are enough as they are. They will never hear that they are loveable. In their world, they can never be loved, but they quest for love. And they will do this again, and again, and again.

What scares me most is that many, many beautiful, intelligent, talented people will be drawn in and destroyed by these pathological individuals in a futile attempt to fill a void of lovelessness that can never be filled, and all these individuals ever did wrong was not know how wonderful they truly are. The experience with the Narcissist will take them even further from that truth, and that’s the tragedy.

This is why we must address this issue. Wonderful people are being pushed ever further from the truth about their wonder by pathological individuals that will never recover, and are hindering the recovery of those that can. How many beautiful people can one malignant Narcissist hinder or destroy? 3? 5? 10? It’s not acceptable, and I believe that those of us that have been through it and understand it have a duty to speak out so that we can bring those who don’t closer to the realisation of their own beauty and wonder.

Oops. I’ve ranted a bit there. It’s a passion of mine.

Great work on the blog. You clearly get it, and I find your voice both insightful and inspiring.

Thank you for your comment Matt. It’s really encouraging to hear from people who find my blog insightful and inspiring 🙂 And I agree with you – something has to change. The worst thing is that regular people usually believe the narcissist, the victim gets further victimised. People who fall for narcs are frequently already broken – not because of anything they did but because of the families that they were born into. The narc first appears so healing and soothing to the unloved child that he or she attaches to him like an abused dog to someone who feeds it – and then bam – you are thrown under the bus again, they essentially laugh into your face for your naive trust in them. But I believe the change is coming. All of us who have healed sufficiently and learned from it are now contributing to this change in understanding. One day, hopefully, we will reach a stage where no judge will be allowed to easily dismiss an emotional woman and were no angry child will be punished without people first looking at the dynamics within the family.

MY brother is ABUSIVE and my narcissist but he does not try to turn people against me except his own kids. MY brother stays in hiding almost. His wife and he stay to themselves because I have told people about him and they believe me not him. I just feel kind of lonely because my parents are gone and I am on my own

MY neighbor is very good to me. I also have a job and the people are quite nice. I am also in a support group and I have a social worker. I also have cousins that are good to me.
I JUST CAN’T BELIEVE MY TWO BROTHERS HAVE ABANDONED ME. I DON’T WANT TO ASSOCIATE WITH MY NARCASSISTIC OLDER BROTHER

THANK you for being there. I appreciate your blog and I do realize my older brother who is the NARCASSIST will never change but I long for the brother I once had before he married his wife who has problems. MY sister in law turned my brother against my mother and I. Five years he literally ruined my life and then with help for myself I caught on to his ABUSE. MY younger brother just cut himself off from me and does not talk to me. HE has his own hangups about being GAY.
I continue to wish for the normal happy family I once had before my parents DIED.

Thank you for your amazingly helpful insights. I have been married to a covert Narc for 26 painful years. I “escaped” nearly one year ago but he is different in his actions in that he didn’t want to discard me because that would ruin his image so he pretended that all is normal. He is very successful, professionally. Over the years I developed Generalized Anxiety Disorder and panic attacks. I was chronically ill with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue and even developed asthma!! While I had left him physically, I had to create space for the process to unfold of my getting strong enough to make my final move. I enlisted a therapist only a few months ago explaining my predicament telling her, “I need you to help me get out of a Narc abuse marriage. Hold me accountable because I’m paralyzed to do anything.” She did and I recently 11/2/18 developed the courage to serve him divorce papers. He reacted by playing victim and securing many flying monkeys by pretending….”we were working on our marriage.” They all thought the poor fellow was blind-sided. Strangely, all the while, he delusional in thought that my therapy would help me to be back with him. His own faux therapy emboldened him and he wore it as a badge of being “healed, more present. Everyone notices a difference.” Lies.

Weeks ago, he shocked me by GPS tracking me to a parking lot and I started convulsing w the Xanax bottle bobbling as I scrambled to get the meds in my mouth. I literally appeared to be having a seizure. I met him at the vets because we had to put our dog down. I immediately left the Vet’s office. He called sobbing telling me “you hurt my heart,” by leaving and suggested we meet for coffee. More CRAZY. He once came down and thought he caught me having an affair. It was a gentleman working on our house getting his equipment. Again, Narc wouldn’t leave so I had to take a sedative. He loomed over me boasting of how he had been staking out my house. When I looked up, he was wearing a baseball cap and a cardboard mustache. Like a child, he boasted how, “I was even able to get my sleeping back in my carry on.” I pleaded with him to GTH out of my house. My anxiety was so bad and I felt suffocated so I grabbed my keys to tell him I was going for a drive. I threw my phone on the floor because he was accusatory, delusional, that I was going to see “him.” I raced out the door and he followed me. I was driving 70 in a 35 mph passing multiple cars to escape his vampire energy. I sat for an hour in the back of a parking lot. I returned home and Narc was at the door sobbing….. “hon…hon….I was almost in a head-on collision.” This is the sickest individual and I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to see the child, the liar, the manipulator, the perpetually raging gorilla that resides inside the mask. I’ve witnessed toddler tantrums, rage attacks, triangulation with our children, etc., He’s turned our adult son (the overtly raging Golden child) completely against me. My daughter, the scapegoat congratulated me but all of our children will need therapy. Thank God I got away. It’s my intention to help my children get the help they need and build myself to be a better role model. I’ll let the lawyers handle this maniac.

Visit my YouTube channel

Search

London-based science and technology journalist, writer, video producer, health and psychology blogger, Czech voice-over artist, English - Czech translator and transcreator. I have a bachelor's degree in journalism from Charles University in Prague, the Czech Republic, master's in cultural anthropology also from Charles University and another master's in science from the International Space University in Strasbourg, France.